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Announced back in August ‘19 (and rolling onto our site with extended gameplay this year), Rock Of Ages 3 is opening the castle gates for a week ahead of next month’s launch. Make & Break is the third in Ace Team’s run of reverse Sisyphus ’em ups. Cursed to forever roll giant boulders down labyrinthine hillsides, Rock Of Ages has you smashing up precarious collections of nonsense with an increasingly ludicrous line-up of rocks, eggs, sheep katamari and cheese wheels....

Ultimate ADOM will again send players to into procedurally-generated dungeons, fighting monsters, zapping spells, looting treasure, and all that, though this time with a friendlier modern trimmings. But it’s still meant to be complex roguelike-y enough that with the right skills you can pull tricks like grafting monsterbits onto yourself and bringing the very walls of the dungeon to life. “We’re all extremely excited to welcome players new and old back to the world of ADOM,” creator Thomas Biskup said in today’s announcement....

Today, we’re looking at our 2009 Advent Calendar winner, Dragon Age: Origins. Replaying it now is a different experience. It’s still a really cool RPG, notable for very good world-building and a cast of interesting characters (that you can have sex with in a cold tent), and it continues to hold a dear place in my heart. On the other hand, there’s a whole section that’s such a mind-numbing slog to get through that everyone hates it and there’s a mod specifically to remove it from the entire game....

Cor, that striking black and white look returns yet again too. A nice homage to samurai films of old, with that grainy layer crackling over it. I’m also impressed by the voice acting, which sounds suitably feudal, with lines like “Show me what you have learned, Hiroki”, delivered with a deep boom. Looks like exploration opts for wider camera angles, the sort you’d find in puzzlers where you run about looking for levers to pull and pots to smash....

Honestly, don’t act surprised when your hand gets trapped in the flesh tube nightmare. What did you think was in there, pennies? The trailer voiceover makes clear that Scorn is not a shooter, but it’s still interesting to me how few living creatures seem to populate its world. My assumption is that you’ll spend a lot of time in Scorn hiding from terrible nasties that mean you harm (while I spend my time not playing it because it’s too stressful), but actually, the trailer makes it look like a sizeable portion of time is spent on a lovely walking holiday through the bony lower intestines....

They also make a brilliant noise as they whizz over your head, which you can hear for yourself in the video below, or when the update drops on March 11th. That’s not all for the latest Sea Of Thieves news though - Rare are running a special event this week for the more chilled pirates among us. The Hunter’s Haul event is a fishing competition, challenging you to catch 180 Ruby Splashtails and hand them in to the Hunter’s Call folks....

This means I have been hoovering up some of the side quests (or local mysteries) in the area that I missed earlier, and one of them, although it took all of three minutes to complete, really made me laugh. It’s about a sea beast called Aflanc The Terrible, only it’s actually the most theatrical attempt at filicide ever, and the NPC involved has my enduring respect. There are many interesting NPCs out and about in Valhalla, from serious business quests like the three pagan witch sisters from King Lear dotted around East Anglia, to the more whimsical, like ‘woman living in a sewer demanding snake entrails’, or ‘man who really likes baseball, somehow’....

Silent Hill 4 was the fourth and final game in the series to be made by creators Team Silent, before Konami handed it over to American and European developers then everything went to hell. It’s a curious one, turning away from familiar places and people. It also has Henry’s home as, well, a home base, a place to revisit between levels and oh god how did ghosts get into my flat oh no....

Piotr Babieno, president of Bloober Team, excitedly touted the partnership on the developer’s official site. He said: “It is a historic day for me and the culmination of several years of our work. The fact that such a renowned company as Konami has decided to strategically cooperate with the Bloober Team means that we also joined the world leaders in gaming and became an equal partner for the leading players in this market....

Temple Of Snek gives me that and more, by crossing those puzzle concepts with the classic rules of Snake. Which are: you are a snake, you are always moving forward, and you get longer the more you eat. Can you wind your way out of each puzzle room before you get long or skewered? Here’s a trailer, which shows Snek in action: The rooms you’re slithering through form “a continuous, interwoven puzzle dungeon with 2-5 hours of gameplay”, according to its Steam page....

Here’s the new trailer: I like that you have the physically drag the resources you’re gathering around and then pin them to your ship before takeoff. The novelty of physics simulations never wore off for me. The new update, as described on Steam, overhauls Space Bob’s combat, doubling the fire rate of every gun, increasing the number of enemies, and revising their behaviour to make them more interesting to avoid or fight....

Yes. This looks like a good place to pretend to be a magic teenager. Chucklefish describe Witchbrook as a “richly detailed magical school and town life simulator”. You potter between lessons and gossip, with an array of activities you might expect from a game that dresses up Stardew Valley in robes and a witch hat. Developers Chucklefish mention “extracurricular activities such as fishing, growing magical crops and foraging strange mushrooms”....

“I definitely love Stardew Valley,” Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) says in an interview with Game Informer. “I love it as a world and a universe. I don’t think [1.5] will be the end of Stardew Valley. I would not be surprised if there’s another Stardew Valley update, or multiple updates, or a Stardew Valley 2. Who knows?” He clarifies that no, there isn’t currently a Stardew Valley 2 in the works....

“For me, Starfield is the Han Solo simulator. Get in a ship, explore the galaxy, do fun stuff,” he says. This comes from an interview with The Washington Post, though I’m not sure this implies we’ll be playing as a roguish smuggler, so much as it suggests that Starfield will give us a good level of freedom. Howard goes on to explain that Starfield will have players join Constellation (who’re also name-dropped in the new trailer above), an organisation composed of the last space explorers....

What I wasn’t expecting was to feel a bit emotional about the game’s reveal, though. I mean, I felt this weird swell in my chest of excitement or something. Maybe it was the crushing jet lag, or maybe it was a heady mixture of nostalgia. Let’s investigate.

We haven’t had much insight into how Steam Deck’s been performing for Valve since pre-order figures popped out of Steam’s HTML in July last year. Valve have been getting on top of supply chain issues since the Deck launched though, and speeding up wait times for orders. Last month, they said that all reservations would be shipped earlier than expected. Even Microsoft Gaming’s CEO Phil Spencer seemed keen on the Deck, but he got one before they were even released....

The announcement trailer above didn’t mean much to me, a Stellaris rookie, but developers Paradox talked about the additions more in a new development diary. “Become The Crisis” is a new ascension perk players can select after they’ve already unlocked two others, and it grants you access to “crisis perks” and “menace objectives”. Committing evil deeds will grant you Menace and allow you to advance through Crisis levels, with new ships unlocked as rewards....

Below Zero is described as a “new chapter” in the Subnautica universe, set two years after the events of the original game. The Steam page avoids using the word “sequel”, and I suppose it’s closest in form to that dreaded portmanteau, the “expandalone”. Expect a new icy region, new creatures including adorable penguinlikes, and a similar core loop of exploration and base expansion to the original game. John enjoyed his time with it back in January 2019, while being surprised at both its ambition and at how early in development it was....

Tchia is an open world game set in a fictional series of islands, inspired by New Caledonia - a collection of islands that are in the Pacific but remain a French-administered territory. Our latest glimpse at Tchia was light on new details about the game but it still gave us updated looks at the vibrant environments, modes of traversal and cast of characters. Take a look at the trailer below....